Having watched Inception a second time, I’m not really sure it has a central theme or story – there’s a lot going on with a number of the characters – but I think I understand the film differently (possibly more fully) after a second watch. The characters that really stood out on the second viewing were Cobb, of course, Fischer, who didn’t seem all that important first time round (indeed I still think he’s a bit of a plot device for the others to play around, but he is important), and Mol (if anyone gets an Oscar out of this, it should be Marion Cotillard not DiCaprio).

One of the primary ideas that runs through the whole film is the relationship of the characters to reality.

You’re waiting for a train, a train that will take you far away. You know where you hope this train will take you, but you can’t be sure. But it doesn’t matter – because we’ll be together.

I didn’t really get this riddle or how it fits into the film first time around but now I think it’s quite central to understanding it. These are the words Cobb says to Mol as they wait to be woken by the train from their dream world that Mol has chosen as her reality (by locking away her totem). This is the pact between Cobb and Mol – they’ve gotten lost in dreams and they’ve both lost track – there’s now the risk that, in dying, they won’t wake up – but it doesn’t matter because they’ll be together. These are then the words that Mol says back to Cobb before she jumps. But he doesn’t jump – he betrays their agreement to stay together whether or not it’s a dream. When Ariadne meets Mol in the basement of Cobb’s memory dreams, we see that maybe Cobb’s guilt isn’t just from knowing that Mol jumped because of his inception (this world isn’t real) but also knowing that he betrayed her by not jumping with her. It’s the fact that they didn’t stay together like he said they would (because it doesn’t matter) that his projection of Mol is most angry about as she chases them back into the elevator.

There is a point near the end of the film, when Ariadne and Cobb meet Mol in limbo, where Mol says to Cobb that he can’t be sure of what’s real any more so why not choose this reality? Why not choose to stay with her? It seems Cobb has somewhat lost his ability to distinguish dreams and reality but he does at this point manage to see through his incomplete projection of his wife and convinces himself that he has to let her go (you might theorise that the whole film is, in fact, him performing this inception on himself – eek!)…

I can’t imagine you with all your complexity, all your perfection, all your imperfection. Look at you. You are just a shade of my real wife. You’re the best I can do; but I’m sorry, you are just not good enough.

“all your perfection, all your imperfection” – I think that’s such a beautiful line.

… however, once we ride our way back up through all the kicks (another awesome sequence as we follow Ariadne’s face through the dream worlds), Cobb is finally reunited with his children and he spins his top one last time, just to check, and it spins, wobbles, teasing us, but keeps on spinning, and then black. The cinema audience lets out a gasp and a knowing chuckle and everyone goes away feeling slightly jarred by the tantalising ending.

Was it still a dream?!

I now think that to ask that question is to miss the real point of the ending – all through the film Cobb is desperate to watch the top spin and fall to check that he’s come back to reality but then, in the final scene, he spins the top and then walks away to be with his children, not waiting for an answer. The point isn’t whether or not he’s still dreaming but that it no longer matters. He has made peace with losing his wife and he’s found a way to be with his children. He’s reached his catharsis and the question of whether it’s a dream or reality has become irrelevant – he’s choosing this reality and sticking to it.

This whole thread of the film is carried in Saito’s line that comes up three times – “Do you want to take a leap of faith, or become an old man, filled with regret, waiting to die alone?”.

So what do we learn? The film asks questions of the viewer and we are left asking the same questions of the film – what is real? what did it all mean? was there more to it than meets the eye? – and, just as Cobb chooses his children and Fischer chooses to believe his dad wanted the best for him (Fischer’s catharsis parallels Cobb’s), in life we sometimes find ourselves making choices that are not so much about truth as they are about finding a way to live.

This quote from Carl Sagan seems relevant at this point…

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It is simply too painful to acknowledge – even to ourselves – that we’ve been so credulous. So the old bamboozles tend to persist as the new bamboozles rise.

Viewing 2 has changed the way I see the film quite substantially and I’m sure there’s still more to pick apart and theorise over but I enjoyed it just as much, maybe more, and certainly differently from first time around. I would note that there’s a scene early on where Cobb gives Ariadne a pencil and paper and 2 minutes to create a maze that takes 1 minute to solve. This is one of the many scenes where the film folds in on itself (just as Ariadne makes the streets of Paris fold in on themselves) – this is surely Nolan referencing the creative process of building such a complex maze of a film. Of course, with the film we’re not really sure that there is a way through at all but it took Nolan 10 years to make Inception so we’ve got a bit of time to think about it!

What’s the most resilient parasite? An idea. A single idea from the human mind can build cities. An idea can transform the world and rewrite all the rules.

The seed that we planted in this man’s mind may change everything.

There are thoughts that we might wish we could un-think – lines of enquiry that we reach the end of only to find conclusions that make us wish we’d never started. Perhaps sometimes it’s true that ignorance is bliss or at least more comfortable. Perhaps it’s be better to strive to be happy than to be right. We all live inconsistently anyway so why not choose inconsistencies that allow us to live fulfilled rather than desperate?

But is that even a choice we can make for ourselves? Often ideas come like an infection. Small, nagging doubts that what we thought might be true may not be (as in Inception’s “what if everything you know isn’t real?”) that start as almost unnoticed seeds but can grow into consuming thoughts that transform our entire internal model of the external world and either enhance or impair our ability to live and thrive in it.

However, we don’t seem capable of choosing only the ideas that enhance – partly because we struggle at the time to identify which ones they will turn out to be – but the whole process of cognitive behavioural therapy is based on the idea of choosing what weight to put on the things we believe about ourselves and our individual and social place in the world.

We all believe both true things and false things about ourselves and we believe each of them to a greater or lesser extent depending on our current circumstances. Large factors in how I see myself are my aspirations for who I want to be in the future and the way I think other people see me in the present. We are all more or less insecure as we go through life, with imperfect knowledge of how people see us or how external factors may change our situation.

The success of CBT seems to be in allowing us to choose to put more faith in the good things we think about ourselves and dismiss the bad things as not true. Whether or not the good or bad things are actually true takes a back seat to finding a position that allows for happiness. Maybe this apparent internal dishonesty is ok though, not least because the person we seem least able to be objective about is ourselves.

P.S. Everyone should go see Inception while it’s on the big screen (at least once)

The position of “I’m right, you’re wrong – you should do/believe what I tell you to” is, in my opinion, the thought process that has most often led people down a path of war or oppression. Not just religious faith but racism, communism, etc.

The faith/atheist debate (like many debates) just becomes more and more polarised with both sides often so entrenched that people on both sides don’t even listen to each other any more.

At the moment I feel that all I (or anyone) can say is “it’s been my experience that…” and to go further than that to claims of absolute truth is to overstep our ability to perceive. I think this fits quite well with the below from 1 Peter 3…

“Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect”

Living in this uncertain, analogue world where things don’t fit nicely into little boxes is much less comfortable than the happy certainty of believing I’m right about everything though!

It seems to be the case that a huge part of who we are and the way we behave is based on who we’re expected to be or even our own perception of ourselves. Sometimes it’s as though we live by the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves (I’ll do this because I’m that kind of person but I would never do that because that’s not the way I am).

Even the way we think about and relate to other people is profoundly affected by whether we identify them as “someone like me” or “other”. An interesting experiment was done in which a group of students sat a test where they were presented with a biography of Rasputin and then asked to write an essay about him. Unbeknown to them, for half of the students the test papers had been tailored so that in the biography Rasputin’s birthday was the same date as theirs. The rest were given Rasputin’s real birthday as a control group.

Strangely, the group who thought that Rasputin shared their birthday were much more sympathetic in their assessment of him and  tended to paint him as a misunderstood character who’d been unfairly demonised by history. Something as simple as sharing the same birthday immediately predisposed these students to be kinder in their treatment of him. How can we trust our ability to make judgements about anything when we’re so easily swayed by seemingly insignificant factors?

Also, I now can’t think of Rasputin without thinking of this video – Ra-Ra-Rasputin, lover of the Russian Queen…

It seems to me that essentially postmodernism is questioning our ability to be 100% objective about anything. Perhaps we can only know absolute truth with absolute certainty if we have access to all the evidence on both sides, which it seems to me that we never do and never can in science or in philosophy/theology.

What then can we say? Perhaps only “It appears to me that…” or “It’s been my experience that…”. As an expression of humility in our understanding and our ability to know, I find that sits quite well with me compared to the greater or lesser position of arrogance that comes with saying “I’m right and you’re wrong”.

Scientific theories are usually presented as fact when really they are only our best model based on the evidence currently available to us and our understanding of that evidence and the uncertainties in collecting it. In that sense the conclusions we draw from scientific experiment are taken on faith and are open to being shown wrong as our understanding grows or evidence comes along that doesn’t fit the current model.

We are all only seekers of truth and (or because) we all only ever have part of the story. Who could claim to have obtained and weighed up all the evidence about anything? Absolute truth may be out there, but my ability to grasp hold of it always seems partial, changeable and fleeting – constantly slipping through my fingers just as I think I’ve found some.

Where Socrates said “all I know is that I know nothing”, postmodernism says “it seems to me that I can’t say anything with any certainty, but I can’t be sure”.

Of course all of this is abstract philosophy and doesn’t really help all that much in the question “how are we to live?”. Putting things in discrete boxes of “true / false” or “agree / disagree” is probably necessary for us to get anywhere useful. It’s pretty hard to live without accepting anything as true!

That said, perhaps postmodernism can teach us to live a bit more humbly in a world where we so often try to impose our truths on each other. “This is my truth, tell me yours” is not such a horrible attitude to have.

Note: I’ve only read 3 chapters so far so this is just initial thoughts that they sparked off (hence “Part 1″)

I’ve realised that I haven’t thought much about physics in the 4 years since I finished my degree. I’d forgotten just how ridiculously, mind-blowingly weird things get when you start delving into the sub-atomic world.

Who Made God starts with a few chapters that throw you straight in at the deep end of our current best model of the make-up of our physical world – quantum mechanics – and then gives very intelligible explanations of the completely counter-intuitive (i.e. crazy) results that have come out of the work that’s been done in those areas over the last hundred years – Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, collapsing wave functions, quantum entanglement, string theory, etc.

I don’t think I’ll go into those here but the book is probably worth a read, whatever else you think about it, just for managing to explain those things in a reasonably layman kind of way but basically I’d forgotten just how much of a mystery the universe is to us even when we just consider the behaviour of the most basic building blocks in isolation.

The title of this book comes from the classic question “If God made the universe then who made God?”, a question that isn’t really any different from “If the universe came from a big bang, what caused that and what was there before?”.  Both deal with a situation beyond the physical universe that bounds our experience and any attempts to contend with either question tend to lead us into circular debates that don’t move us any further forward in our understanding.

Now, it’s a big step from “Everything’s a mystery” to Jesus but it’s good to remember, in a debate where science is often presented as having all the answers, that often the more we know, the more we know we don’t know. It makes me wonder how much any of us can ever know about anything when we don’t even understand the fundamental behaviour of the tiny building block of the universe (and our own bodies) or the mechanism of the process that causes things to fall down (in our best model everything that has mass distorts space in a way that draws other masses towards it – “distorts space”?! How can we begin to get our heads around that as a concept?!).

To be honest, I’ve never really been a fan of the whole Science/Religion debate from either side. So often one field ends up being shown to be inadequate when you try to apply elements of it to the other e.g. God of the gaps (that keep disappearing of shrinking as our understanding improves) and science being mistaken for explanation rather than description. We are all walking on thin ice when we debate these things and the famous proponents on both sides could do with a big dose of humility.

The world used to be flat, the Sun used to go round the Earth, atoms were unsplittable, etc. All we can really say is that large parts of what we think we know may turn out to be incomplete or completely wrong.

I’ll finish with a thought from Augustine. It’s interesting to consider it in the context of the level of science when he was writing (400ADish)…

“Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world … Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics … people outside of the household of the faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and … If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven …?”

(from this interesting article… Creationism, intelligent design and science education)

Firstly, I like to write. It helps me refine what I think about things and motivates me to do some research to nail down my understanding and my thoughts rather than allowing fleeting inclinations to remain nebulous*.

Secondly, I like to read things I have written in the past. It’s always interesting to see how my views have changed, adapted or stayed the same over time and be reminded of the person I’ve been and the person I’m becoming.

Thirdly, I have missed thinking about and discussing the “Big Issues” and generally engaging with that kind of challenge on an intellectual level. That’s not to say that my job or my life outside work aren’t engaging or stimulating (or in fact related to a global challenge) – just that sometimes in the doing we forget to think outside of the routine. The questions of how we are all to live together on this planet without destroying ourselves – poverty, water, energy, justice, economics – and what it means for us to do so are inspiring and, in our relatively rich position in the world, questions that we have the luxury and the responsibility to engage with.

In some of those respects I feel it has been, and will continue to be, a success.

One thing I did not start blogging for was to create a page that would work its way to the top of the rankings in a search on Google for “cheese footballs” and yet in that respect, this blog has been particularly successful – number one on Google.co.uk and number two on Google.com (see for yourself…) – so now people all over the world looking for information about cheese footballs will end up here.

I’m now tempted to see what other random phrase I can acquire a top ten Google ranking for. Feel free to make a suggestion in the comments.

* Yes, I could have said “ambiguous” but I like how the word “nebulous” has a suggestion of a cloud of ideas floating around somewhere in the back of my head but never being formed into a definite, solid, coherent and self-consistent thought.